Gideros Mobile Game Development by Arturs Sosins

Arturs has written a thorough and entertaining book on how to program for the Gideros platform. He elegantly covers all requirements to get you started on the road to making your own mobile games. All aspects of indie programming are covered from graphics to music and physics to managing your scenes. He goes into great detail explaining each section along the way and provides enough examples to help guide you to publishing your own game. Whether you are an absolute beginner or a seasoned professional, if you wish to learn the intricacies of the Gideros platform, this book has it all.

Programming games and other applications for mobile platforms can seem very daunting at first. You need to keep in mind the differing platform requirements and App store restrictions. Mobile development needs to cover not only small mobile phones but also the larger tablet sized devices. You need to be able to cover a range of screen resolutions from 320×480 to over 1500×2000. Arturs effectively describes how it is possible to cover these dimensions to give your game the highest quality graphics and the best settings to cover all devices.

The third chapter delves into demonstrations of Game Logic and optimising art. You will learn how to pack your textures for memory efficiency and speed as well as creating Level Packs for defining layouts for your game objects.

A popular genre of mobile games are physics-enabled games. These include games such as Angry Birds and Mashballs (you will create a clone of this game while learning with this book). Arturs gives you example Lua code for developing your physics game and the caveats you need to be aware of to create your game successfully.

You also need to be keenly aware of whether certain devices are touch-only or – in the case of Google’s Android – touch-and-buttons are used for input. Gideros Mobile Game Development covers each of these cases in chapter 4 and shows you how to get the best out of your application.

Audio is very important when it comes to game development and sometimes not enough attention is paid to this particular vector when you are beginning your foray into mobile development. This book covers recommendations for audio file formats for background music and sound effects. Utilising the correct formats will ensure your game will be all it can be. Make sure you invest time in finding the best genre of music for your game.

To complete your project, you will need to store and recover player high scores and other statistics. This gives your players the ability to compete for better game completion, bonuses and extends the longevity of the gameplay by lettings them try to achieve higher scores. Motivating your players with rewards provides a reason for them to keep coming back to your game.

I highly recommend Gideros Mobile Game Development for anyone wanting to dip their virtual toes into the world of mobile development in a cheap (indeed, free) way. With this book, the support of the Gideros website forums and documentation, your development requirements will be complete. Even if you are a seasoned developer, you will find the Gideros platform useful for fast prototyping your games and will find this book invaluable.